How to Start a Worm Farm

I had been thinking about having a worm farm for a long time, but living in Western Australia, I had heard many stories of people having these, and in the heat they all died.

Being an animal lover I did not want to risk this as I would get upset, so I waited many years until I, by chance, met a neighbour living close by, who has had a worm farm for about 20 years, and helped me set mine up.

The main thing that I learnt was that it must always be moist inside so they dont get too hot.

A garage is a good place to keep them as they do not get direct sun in there, and is cooler in Summer than outside in the 38 degree plus temperatures that we have.

My first move was to find the actual worm farm to house the little critters in.

These come in several shapes however I decided on the round one as I thought it would be easier to clean when I had to empty it, and also I got three tiered one (am only using one tier till this fills up with castings).

My Worm farm

You put either canvas or a piece of plastic above the food, and when you put the lid on, no cockroaches or insects can get into here.

I used plastic to cover the food

You use the worm juice on any type of plant -it is a natural fertilizer full of goodness and will not harm any plant and I water it down to about 1 part worm juice to two parts water.

Worm juice, undiluted

I started off with a few handfuls that my friend gave me, however became impatient, and she brought me another handful.

I now have perhaps several hundred though there is no way you would really know this as you often cannot see them unless you rummage around in the castings and food, which I do with a glove on.

You can just see a few pink worms

I have some really long ones now as well as visibly smaller babies, so I feel I have been successful with raising these worms!

I blend them vegetables once a week and feed them grass clippings -all put in a small heap in the middle. I put egg shells in this as apparently this makes it "sweeter" for the worms.

Grass Clippings as well as blended vegetables and scraps

When the heap is more spread out, you know they have eaten some, and you cannot put more than about 3 days food on here or it will get mould on it.

Around the edges I soak newspaper for hours, cut it up and squeeze it out slightly and put this round the edges -they will eat this if their food runs out and it is also a place they can go if grass clippings heat up (as they do) to too high a temperature.

Worms, although you do not usually name them and interact with them as you can with, say a dog, are still interesting to breed and I treat them as another of my pets!

I am constantly going out to check on them, watch them moving about, and to make sure they have enough food and seem to be surviving, "happy" and multiplying!